The Woman Thou Gavest Me; Being the Story of Mary O'Neill. Sir Hall Caine
gel! I'll show you over them to-morrow morning."
Aunt Bridget (white-headed now and wearing spectacles and a white cap), Betsy Beauty (grown tall and round, with a kind of country comeliness) and Nessy MacLeod (looking like a premature old maid who was doing her best to be a girl) were waiting at the open porch when our car drew up, and they received me with surprising cordiality.
"Here she is at last!" said Aunt Bridget.
"And such luck as she has come home to!" said Betsy Beauty.
There were compliments on the improvement in my appearance (Aunt Bridget declaring she could not have believed it, she really could not), and then Nessy undertook to take me to my room.
"It's the same room still, Mary," said my Aunt, calling to me as I went upstairs. "When they were changing everything else I remembered your poor dear mother and wouldn't hear of their changing that. It isn't a bit altered."
It was not. Everything was exactly as I remembered it. But just as I was beginning for the first time in my life to feel grateful to Aunt Bridget, Nessy said:
"No thanks to her, though. If she'd had her way, she would have wiped out every trace of your mother, and arranged this marriage for her own daughter instead."
More of the same kind she said which left me with the impression that my father was now the god of her idolatry, and that my return was not too welcome to my aunt and cousin; but as soon as she was gone, and I was left alone, home began to speak to me in soft and entrancing whispers.
How my pulses beat, how my nerves tingled! Home! Home! Home!
From that dear spot everything seemed to be the same, and everything had something to say to me. What sweet and tender and touching memories!
Here was the big black four-post bed, with the rosary hanging at its head; and here was the praying-stool with the figure of Our Lady on the wall above it.
I threw up the window, and there was the salt breath of the sea in the crisp island air; there was the sea itself glistening in the afternoon sunshine; there was St. Mary's Rock draped in its garment of sea-weed, and there were the clouds of white sea-gulls whirling about it.
Taking off my hat and coat I stepped downstairs and out of the house—going first into the farm-yard where the spring-less carts were still clattering over the cobble-stones; then into the cow-house, where the milkmaids were still sitting on low stools with their heads against the sides of the slow-eyed Brownies, and the milk rattling in their noisy pails; then into the farm-kitchen, where the air was full of the odour of burning turf and the still sweeter smell of cakes baking on a griddle; and finally into the potting-shed in the garden, where Tommy the Mate (more than ever like a weather-beaten old salt) was still working as before.
The old man looked round with his "starboard eye," and recognised me instantly.
"God bless my sowl," he cried, "if it isn't the lil' missy! Well, well! Well, well! And she's a woman grown! A real lady too! My gracious; yes," he said, after a second and longer look, "and there hasn't been the match of her on this island since they laid her mother under the sod!"
I wanted to ask him a hundred questions, but Aunt Bridget, who had been watching from a window, called from the house to say she was "mashing" a cup of tea for me, so I returned to the drawing-room where (my father being busy with his letters in the library) Betsy Beauty talked for half an hour about Lord Raa, his good looks, distinguished manners and general accomplishments.
"But aren't you just dying to see him?" she said.
I saw him the following morning.
TWENTY-FIFTH CHAPTER
I was sitting in my own room, writing to the Reverend Mother, to tell her of my return home, when I heard the toot of a horn and raising my eyes saw a motor-car coming up the drive. It contained three gentlemen, one of them wore goggles and carried a silver-haired terrier on his knees.
A little later Nessy MacLeod came to tell me that Lord Raa and his party had arrived and I was wanted immediately.
I went downstairs hesitatingly, with a haunting sense of coming trouble. Reaching the door of the drawing-room I saw my intended husband for the first time—there being nothing in his appearance to awaken in me the memory of ever having seen him before.
He was on the hearthrug in front of the fire, talking to Betsy Beauty, who was laughing immoderately. To get a better look at him, and at the same time to compose myself, I stopped for a moment to speak to the three gentlemen (the two lawyers and Lord Raa's trustee or guardian) who were standing with my father in the middle of the floor.
He was undoubtedly well-dressed and had a certain air of breeding, but even to my girlish eyes he betrayed at that first sight the character of a man who had lived an irregular, perhaps a dissipated life.
His face was pale, almost puffy, his grey eyes were slow and heavy, his moustache was dark and small, his hair was thin over his forehead, and he had a general appearance of being much older than his years, which I knew to be thirty-three.
His manners, when I approached him, were courteous and gentle, almost playful and indulgent, but through all their softness there pierced a certain hardness, not to say brutality, which I afterwards learned (when life had had its tug at me) to associate with a man who has spent much of his time among women of loose character.
Betsy Beauty made a great matter of introducing us; but in a drawling voice, and with a certain play of humour, he told her it was quite unnecessary, since we were very old friends, having made each other's acquaintance as far back as ten years ago, when I was the prettiest little woman in the world, he remembered, though perhaps my manners were not quite cordial.
"We had a slight difference on the subject of kisses. Don't you remember it?"
Happily there was no necessity to reply, for my father came to say that he wished to show his lordship the improvements he had been making, and the rest of us were at liberty to follow them.
The improvements consisted chiefly of a new wing to the old house, containing a dining room, still unfurnished, which had been modelled, as I found later, on the corresponding room in Castle Raa.
With a proud lift of his white head my father pointed out the beauties of his new possession, while my intended husband, with his monocle to his eye, looked on with a certain condescension, and answered with a languid humour that narrowly bordered on contempt.
"Oak, sir, solid oak," said my father, rapping with his knuckles on the tall, dark, heavy wainscoting.
"As old as our hearts and as hard as our heads, I suppose," said Lord Raa.
"Harder than some, sir," said my father.
"Exactly," said Lord Raa in his slow drawl, and then there was general laughter.
The bell rang for luncheon, and we went into the plain old dining room, where Aunt Bridget placed her principal guest on her right and told him all about her late husband, the Colonel, his honours and military achievements.
I could see that Lord Raa was soon very weary of this, and more than once, sitting by his side, I caught the cynical and rather supercilious responses to which, under the gloss of his gracious manners, Aunt Bridget seemed quite oblivious.
I was so nervous and embarrassed that I spoke very little during luncheon, and even Aunt Bridget observed this at last.
"Mary, dear, why don't you speak?" she said.
But without waiting for my reply she proceeded to explain to his lordship that the strangest change had come over me since I was a child, when I had been the sauciest little chatterbox in the world, whereas now I was so shy that it was nearly impossible to get a word out of me.
"Hope